In the Eastern countries, food is medicine. According to ancient medicine to maintain health and balance each dish must be balanced with five flavors. The 5 flavors are: sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and pungent. When those flavors are present the food has a harmonizing and healing effect on the body. In the Western world, it is very hard to find dishes with all those flavors at the same time. That is why I believe we must struggle to at least eat all those flavors on the same day.
In the West we mostly consume sweet and salty flavors, missing the other 3 this creates an imbalance in our diet. Most people eat like that for years or their whole life. In the West, we primarily miss bitter and pungent flavors. Those particular flavors help greatly with detox, digestion, and metabolism as well as immunity. The lack is reflected in the diseases and symptoms most people in developed countries suffer from.
For example, someone eats cornflakes with milk for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and meatballs with pasta for dinner. For dessert, they have ice cream. In this example, bitter and pungent flavors are missing creating an imbalance that leads to symptoms like weight gain, indigestion, and water retention. In the same way, our bodies would be imbalanced while consuming for example mostly sour and pungent foods without sweet, salty, and bitter flavors.
Here are examples of a few bitter-flavored foods we are missing in our diet: greens, romaine salad, kale, dandelion, Brussels sprouts, parsley, celery, and burdock root. I can’t blame anyone for not linking bitter foods. We naturally gravitate towards sweet and salty and we likely became accustomed to eating that way. It can be frustrating to shop for those bitter ingredients and find ways to prepare them, not everyone has culinary skills.
If you’d like to harmonize your body with missing flavors, especially bitter and pungent one way to do that with ease is supplementation with herbs. Taking herbal capsules prevents you from tasting the flavor and allows your body to fully benefit from the many healing properties of bitter foods. I invite you to book a Consultation with me.